The present invention relates to selling products from a convenience store in a service station and, more particularly, to a system and method for utilizing a portable device delivered to a driver of a fueling car or a driver who stop near the pump, for facilitating purchase from the convenience store in the gas station during fueling and without going out of the car.
Traditionally, gas stations were founded in order to provide drivers an easy way of fueling their cars. In time, as gas stations' owners wanted to increase their revenues, additional services were built around the gas stations. Nowadays, common services of a typical gas station include: car-wash, convenience stores, garages, restaurants and coffee shops.
Gas stations merchants invest substantial budgets and efforts trying to get customers, that visit the station, to get out of the car, step into the convenience store and make some purchases. Obviously, only low percentage of the total amount of drivers, visiting the station, leave their cars and step into the convenience store. The percentage of drivers that visit the convenience store is about 15 percent of the cars passing through the station. The rest of the drivers just stay in their cars, fueling and leave the station without visiting the convenience store.
The drivers may have various reasons to stay in their cars such as: Stay in the car due to weather—too hot, too cold, rainy, snowy etc.; Stay in the car due to valuables in the car—computer, merchandise, documents etc.; Stay in the car due to children in the car, as the parent doesn't want to leave them alone or have them wondering around the gas station; Avoiding queues hassle—in the store or near the pump, cannot find a parking place; and other reasons.
While in the car, waiting for their car to be filled up with gas, the drivers are practically doing nothing. It is a good three to seven minutes that are available, though wasted time. During this time there is no significant effort to sell the customers anything else but the fuel while actually there is a huge captive market for customers.
The image of the convenience stores has been significantly improved in the last years. Nevertheless, any product that is sold in the vicinity of the gas pump is considered to be unclean, badly maintained (exposed to sun etc.) and usually only limited number of products are offered to the drivers near the pumps.
There is a need to expose the products of the convenience store to the drivers that wait in their cars and to provide drivers the ability to purchase products, while fueling, without leaving the car area.